Turkish Glass making

The traditional art of glassware in Turkey can be seen as two areas of study, the glassware of the Seljuk and the Ottoman periods.

We know of the existence of some, if not many, glass artifacts of the Seljuk period in Anatolia, dating from an era when the Seljuk Turks were newly migrated from the east and on the peninsula. Some pieces of the Seljuk and Artukid period are now in museum collections.

During the Ottoman period, the art of glass making was considerably advanced, as we may see from the surviving products of the period. The glass industry took particularly great strides in Istanbul after the conquest of the city.

The traditional glass industry produced some of its finest ware during the 17-18th centuries, and yet very little documentary material has survived from that period. We know that a glass-making center existed at Eğrikapı in İstanbul, which was situated between the Tekfur Sarayı and Eğrikapı. A miniature commissioned for Murat III. does furnish some important contemporary documentation. It illustrates the procession of the glassmakers, and is quite and important as it shows a working atelier mounted on a float, with glass workers engaged in their trade, shaping vessels around a burning furnace. If we look closely at the basic tools used in this portable workshop, we will see that contemporary workshops using traditional techniques also utilize basically similar tools.

Evidences show that the Ottoman glass industry seems to have been centered on İstanbul. The sources reveal the existence of glass workshops producing a great variety of glassware in and around the capital, at Eğrikapı, Eyüp, Balat, Ayvansaray, Bakırköy, Beykoz, Paşabahçe, Çubuklu and İncirköy.

Apart from glassware produced locally in such centers, glass was also imported from abroad, Venice in particular, which had become a major glass-exporting center at the 13th century. A Turkish trading house existed in Venice at that time. The import of glass especially produced for the Turkish market in Venice was prohibited by the Sultan in 1716, although glass was imported from another center, Bohemia, from 1700 onwards.

It is also known that glass craftsmen were imported from France during the reign of Mahmut I, and that a Mevlevi Dervish by the name of Mehmet Dede was sent to Italy during the reign of Selim III to learn certain glass-making techniques. It is said that the Mevlevi craftsman in question founded an atelier in Beykoz, İstanbul, and that among the more popular and successful of the products of this workshop was Çeşm-i Bülbül, a form of filigree ware. In 1899 a workshop was found on the site of the present Turkish glass factory Paşabahçe by a Levantine Jew named Saul Modiano producing ware marked as “Fabbrica Vetrami di D. Modiano, Constantinople”, which by 1902 was employing a work force of 500.

With the foundation of the Republic, the Turkish glass industry was given a new lease of life. The first national factory was founded on the slopes of the Bosphorus at Paşabahçe, not far from the site of other glass ateliers on 17 February 1934, by the approval of a parliamentary commission. This first factory, founded as the “Türkiye Şişe ve Cam Fabrikaları A. Ş”. by İş Bankası was followed by a number of other corporations manufacturing glass of various kinds.

Paşabahçe Glass Company, especially in its foundation years, gathered many glass craftsmen from all parts of the country and developed into an important glass making center for the history of Turkish glass. One of the master glass workers of this era, (father) Yusuf Görmüs, is particularly noted for his free-formed pieces.

Traditional Turkish glassware Çeşm-i Bülbül in particular or Turkish filigree in “facon de Venice”, is also called Beykoz ware. Similar ware is still in production at Murano in Venice, where filigree work of high quality is produced. Apart from traditional filigree work Çeşm-i Bülbül, Turkish glassware appears mainly to have favored forms and styles which are suitable for applied and brushwork decorations, with a particular emphasis on forms inherited from the art of ceramics.

“Çeşm-i Bülbül”, Turkish Filigree Work

This is the Turkish name given to filigree. Other kinds of filigree are known in glass centers throughout the world. It is a feature of Anatolian workshops as well as those further afield. It is a technique that even the technological advances of modern glass cannot surpass the finest filigree craftsmanship of the past.

Çeşm-i Bülbül is a highly skilled technique. Each stage of the formation of the vessel is carried out in strict sequence, and must be completed in a very short time. The technique may not differ, but each craftsman’s approach to it will be different in style. There is also no room for error with this technique. Once an error has been made, it is almost impossible to correct it, so all the technical rules of glassmaking must be carried out to the letter with great precision.